acbass":6ddtkjtx said:
I believe the Panthers used it as a tactical advantage. Whether it was planned or not, I don't know. They ran a ton more than usual. My wife even made a comment at some point "do they ever throw the ball?" Back in the day teams would grow the grass longer in some places to slow down faster teams. I think the NFL really needs to do something about the quality of some of these fields. The Redskins stadium, 49ers, Panthers, Bears, and a couple of others have just atrocious fields. It's dangerous. If the league is so worried about injuries why don't they set a mandate for the quality of the field? I'm sure requiring field turf will never happen but I'd like to see it one day.
Yes, some teams would leave the grass outside the numbers longer to slow down the other team's WR's.
Theoretically, if you look at the matchup, the Seahawks had a much better WR corps than the Panthers did, and the Panthers game plan looked to be very run heavy like they knew it. Since I don't know if that is illegal or not, I'll chaulk it up to manufacturing a bigger HFA.
That said, Stewart didn't get 100 yards on us earlier in the season, and we held their run game in check the first game. Poor run fits and not stopping an obvious game plan are not the fault of the field. If our defense had shut down their run game, it's an entirely different story.
The Panthers have a good team. We needed to go in there and not make mistakes, but the offense turned the ball over and the defense allowed them to run the ball on us. We've all seen how easy you can beat a team when you establish a dominant run game. It was poor execution all the way around.
Couple this with us pissing away the game earlier in the year, and it gave Carolina the confidence to jump on us early and hold out for a win. I've said this before about divisonal rivals: if you let them come into your house and win, they gain confidence that they can repeatedly do it. As evidenced by the Cardinals and Rams recently.